പേജുകള്‍‌

Friday, July 26, 2013

Mamady is one of the best african percussionist in the world. This film
from 1991 follows him as he goes back to the village where he grew up in
Guinea for the first time after 26 years. It becomes a moving adventure
as we witness Mamady getting back in touch with his people and his old
master. It features some really amazing dance moments ; LOTS of emotions
; and great chanting/percussions of course.

At the begining we learn how Mamady, as a baby, cried so much that his
father took him to a witch doctor. After predicting a great future in
which the baby would grow up to overshadow everybody else in the
village, the doctor washed the infant's hands in a rare herbal potion.

Mamady Keita became a prodigy who at 14 was one of five percussionists
selected for membership in the National Djoliba Ballet. His instrument,
the djembe, is a large drum that is made of goat's hide tautly stretched
over yoroko wood and is beaten with the hands. Depending on which part
of the instrument is touched, it yields three distinctive tones. Even
now he marvels at how, after hours of playing, his hands never become
stiff or blistered.

The straightforward, smoothly edited film follows Mamady from Brussels
on a pilgrimage to his native village of Balandugu, Guinea. After flying
from Brussels to Conakry, Guinea's capital, Mamady Keita and the film
crew make the rest of the trip by jeep to the remote village. There, he
has a tear-filled reunion with friends and relatives who had assumed he
was dead.

"Djembefola" accomplishes a lot in its 65 minutes. In addition to
sketching a vivid portrait of its subject, it clearly describes the
basic qualities of the djembe. The film's several extended musical
sequences suggest how the instrument's beats and tones become a complex
emotional language that serves as a kind of communal heartbeat for the
people of Balandugu.

POST TENEBRAS LUX (“light after darkness”), ostensibly the story of an
upscale, urban family whose move to the Mexican countryside results in
domestic crises and class friction, is a stunningly photographed,
impressionistic psychological portrait of a family and their place
within the sublime, unforgiving natural world. Reygadas conjures a host
of unforgettable, ominous images: a haunting sequence at dusk as
Reygadas’s real-life daughter wanders a muddy field and farm animals
loudly circle and thunder and lightning threaten; a glowing-red demon
gliding through the rooms of a home; a husband and wife visiting a
swingers’ bathhouse with rooms named after famous philosophers. By turns
entrancing and mystifying, POST TENEBRAS LUX palpably explores the
primal conflicts of the human condition.